The Smoky God; Or, A Voyage to the Inner WorldEmerson, Willis George
Science
The Smoky God; Or, A Voyage to the Inner World
Emerson, Willis George
Voyages, Imaginary
During the following year we visited many villages and towns, prominent
among them being the cities of Nigi, Delfi, Hectea, and my father was
called upon no less than a half-dozen times to go over the maps which
had been made from the rough sketches he had originally given of the
divisions of land and water on the "outside" surface of the earth.
I remember hearing my father remark that the giant race of people in the
land of "The Smoky God" had almost as accurate an idea of the geography
of the "outside" surface of the earth as had the average college
professor in Stockholm.
In our travels we came to a forest of gigantic trees, near the city of
Delfi. Had the Bible said there were trees towering over three hundred
feet in height, and more than thirty feet in diameter, growing in the
Garden of Eden, the Ingersolls, the Tom Paines and Voltaires would
doubtless have pronounced the statement a myth. Yet this is the
description of the California sequoia gigantea; but these California
giants pale into insignificance when compared with the forest Goliaths
found in the "within" continent, where abound mighty trees from eight
hundred to one thousand feet in height, and from one hundred to one
hundred and twenty feet in diameter; countless in numbers and forming
forests extending hundreds of miles back from the sea.
The people are exceedingly musical, and learned to a remarkable degree
in their arts and sciences, especially geometry and astronomy. Their
cities are equipped with vast palaces of music, where not infrequently
as many as twenty-five thousand lusty voices of this giant race swell
forth in mighty choruses of the most sublime symphonies.
The children are not supposed to attend institutions of learning before
they are twenty years old. Then their school life begins and continues
for thirty years, ten of which are uniformly devoted by both sexes to
the study of music.
Their principal vocations are architecture, agriculture, horticulture,
the raising of vast herds of cattle, and the building of conveyances
peculiar to that country, for travel on land and water. By some device
which I cannot explain, they hold communion with one another between the
most distant parts of their country, on air currents.
All buildings are erected with special regard to strength, durability,
beauty and symmetry, and with a style of architecture vastly more
attractive to the eye than any I have ever observed elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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